Question

C#:

var articles = Article
                      .OrderBy(x=> x.Name)
                      .Where(x=> x.Name.Contains(pattern))
                      .Select(x=>new {x.Name + " (article)"})
                      .ToList();

It’s good to write this way in C# and it’s called “methods concatenation”. In fact, I don’t remember exactly how they are called, I read it in Jon Skeet’s book. The idea is that each method is on a new line, and it’s normal in C#.

What about Ruby? Is it normal to write:

articles = Article
                  .order(:name)
                  .where("name like ?","%#{pattern}%")
                  .map(&:name)
                  .map {|c| c << " (article)"}

Answer 1

Subjective question, so her’s a subjective answer (as Ruby programmer):

1. I prefer not to create “holes”, in my code I wouldn’t insert that level of indentation.

2. You can also insert the dots at the end of the line. Which is more readable? hard to say, I prefer the latter (although I don’t mind at the beginning of the line, it’s not a big deal). So I’d probably write (note that those two maps could be joined):

   article_names = Article.
     order(:name).
     where("name LIKE ?", "%#{pattern}%").
     map(&:name).
     map { |name| name + " (article)"}
   

3. In my experience, long chains make code harder to follow. When the chain grows too much (5, 6 elements?) I tend to break it creating intermediate variables with meaningful names, this helps me to further describe the expression:

   filtered_articles = Article.order(:name).where("name LIKE ?", "%#{pattern}%")
   names = filtered_articles.map { |article| "#{article.name} (article)" }